


Homing Instincts

by Cerusee



Series: Posthumous Dialogues [3]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Batfam Week 2017, Gen, Jason and Stephanie are friends, Panic Attacks, Pigeons, Platonic Cuddling, Stephanie Brown once slapped Batman in the face and Jason just thinks that’s neat, tiny bit of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-13 06:57:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11179446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerusee/pseuds/Cerusee
Summary: Not all legacies are good legacies.  Stephanie has a bad night, and she and Jason have a talk.For the Batfam week theme: "Legacy".





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as always to audreycritter for editing.

Stephanie could hear the open-and-close of the apartment’s front door from where she lay in the bed. She tugged the blankets up to just over her eyes. The room was dark, but not dark enough.

Footsteps through the apartment; footsteps into the room. The bedroom door creaked open, and she clenched her eyes shut.

“Yo,” Jason said. “I’d guessed Cass.”

“Sorry. Just me.”

She heard the sounds of Jason kicking off his boots, unbuckling his belt, shuffling out of his pants. He would have lost his jacket at the door, so just boxers and the shirt, then. 

Jason sighed deeply, and then threw himself backwards onto the bed. It shook under his weight. His right arm landed on Steph’s face, and she winced and shoved it off of her.

“What’s the story, morning glory?” Jason asked. “Why are you in my safehouse and/or bed?”

Steph buried her face. “Everyone is mad at me,” she mumbled.

“Who’s everyone?”

“Everyone. Batman, Oracle, Tim and Cass. Even stupid _Damian_...”

Jason whistled. “Impressive. Why?”

“Because I did something dumb. Again. Apparently,” Steph said, into the blankets.

Jason prodded her firmly in the spine with his elbow. She couldn’t help but lean back against it, just for a moment. “Tell All, BG,” Jason said.

Steph pulled a pillow over her face. “There was this warehouse,” she said, in a muffled voice.

Jason yanked the pillow away and tossed it off the bed. “Speak the hell up.”

“There was this warehouse,” she repeated, blinking rapidly. “It was...are you up to date on the Zefferelli thing?”

“I was leaving that one to the big guy,” Jason said. “But I know generally what was going on.”

“Yeah, okay, so we were working it—it was just clean-up by then, you know? But I was in this warehouse on the docks. It was wired from yesterday to tomorrow. I’d gotten everybody out. And I was about to go, but there was this...there was a pigeon still in there.”

“A pigeon?”

“Yeah, a pigeon. And I couldn’t just leave her behind.”

“Why not?” Jason sounded genuinely baffled.

“Could you _not_?”

“Oh-kay...”

“Like, I don’t _know_ ,” Steph said, hitching up onto her side so that she could look down at Jason, not that it mattered because all the lights were off and they could barely see for shit. “I don’t know why! People have been yelling at me all night and I don’t know why I did it!” Her heart was beating far too fast and she was breathing too hard.

Jason’s fingers snaked up along her arm. He squeezed her upper arm. “Hey, come on. It’s okay, I promise.”

Steph took a deep breath, and then another, and eased back down on her side, still facing Jason. Her eyes were moist. “I’m taking a bio class and we’re doing birds right now. They’re really smart, you know? So much smarter than we think they are. And pigeons. We treat them like they’re shit—there’s that whole joke about them being rats with wings, right?” Steph shivered. “But pigeons are amazing. They have the most amazing homing instincts. They can find their way home over distances that are just unreal.”

“Yeah?” Jason said. He almost sounded...interested? It was a balm, after everything. Nobody earlier that night had given a crap about why exactly Stephanie Brown had taken so long to come crashing out of the window of the warehouse with a pigeon under her elbow and literal fire on her heels.

“Yeah,” Steph said. “And _this_ pigeon. She only had one leg. She wasn’t hopping around as much as normal birds.” She laughed. “She was conserving her energy. But she was just...so… _cool_.” Her eyes started to water again, for the fourth time that night. This time, she let the tears come without fighting them. It was okay to cry with Jason. Jason didn’t freak out at the sight of tears, or look down on you for crying. “I waited way, way too long to get out of the building because I was chasing this one-legged pigeon, and I just couldn’t leave her to die.”

“Steph,” Jason said, “Are you seriously saying you risked your life rescuing a bird from a warehouse that was going to explode?”

“Yes,” Steph said, and her knowledge of Jason’s history and her alarm radar combined explosively, screaming _NO NO GET OUT_. But Jason only dragged her into a crushing hug. 

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking about...stuff,” she said, muffled against Jason’s chest.

“Shut up,” he said into her hair. “I love you.” He released her, and despite the darkness, Steph thought she could see Jason blink hard before he flopped back against the pillows.

“Everybody was so mad at me because I pushed it way too far over a dumb bird...like, you’d think Damian would have gotten it, because he’s all about saving the animals, right?” Steph swallowed hard. “But he called me stupid and he wasn’t nice about it. And Cass, she didn’t say anything, but she just looked so _disappointed_ in me…”

“They love you and they were worried about you,” Jason said. He kicked her shin, gently. “Also, they’re a bunch of fucking douchebags.”

“Do you know that they used to compare us?”

Steph felt Jason stiffen against her. “What?”

So much for relaxation or sleep. Oops.

“Batman...everyone....they used to compare me to you,” Steph said, in a small voice. “Like how I was too much like you and I’d get myself killed like you because I was careless and...” This had always, always been on the back of her mind when she talked to Jason. Always as a “don’t bring this up!” subject. Jason was volatile. Jason was violent. Stay away from Jason; Jason was a failure and angry and made his own end and don’t be like Jason; you’re too much like Jason; you’ll go out just like Jason; but she had; she'd made bad choices that led to a dark face pressing down over her and the sound of whirring in her ears and—

 

“Steph, honey—Stephie, c’mon.” Someone was stroking her hand, and for one beautiful moment, nothing at all hurt. But when she opened her eyes, her whole body throbbed with remembered pain. The lights were on, and Jason’s bright blue eyes stared down into hers. “Hiya.”

“Hey,” she managed. She reached out and okay, how weird was it that she recognized the feel of Jason’s sheets? But that was a Jason thing; he sprang for the highest thread count available for all his beds in all his safehouses, at least all the ones she’d been in.

She sat up and pulled her knees all the way up, resting her chin on them and wrapping her arms around her shins. The aching was mostly psychosomatic, she told herself. Mostly. And the rest was just what you got when you spent all night punching people and jumping through plate-glass windows.

Jason sat beside her, resting a hand on her back, rubbing it lightly up and down along her spine.

“You too?” he said.

Steph shuddered and shook her head. “It’s not the same, I know. It was just...I came really close...” She laughed, brokenly. “I _felt_ dead, for a long time. Like I didn’t exist in this world.” She leaned against him. “I’m really sorry,” she said, mostly into his collarbone. His shirt smelled like his sweat; he must have been out earlier, even though he hadn’t been out with them. The smell was immensely comforting.

“It’s okay, Steph,” he said quietly. “It’s okay.”

They sat that way for so long Steph lost track of time.

“Jason,” she said eventually, feeling daring and dark and suicidal. “What was it like to die?”

Jason took a huge breath, and knocked his head against Steph’s. It felt like hearing a secret. “Jesus Christ,” he said, his voice so bleak that it made her shiver and burrow one hand back underneath the blankets. “Awful. It hurt so much. He kept _hitting_ me. I felt every single bone break. I hoped I’d survive, but,” Steph felt Jason’s whole body shudder next to hers. His breath hitched. She turned her head and in the lamplight she could easily see the tears tracking down the side of his face. “I knew I was already dying. I really, really wanted to get out, I was looking for a way to escape, but there wasn’t one. The whole time I could _feel_ my death happening; I knew it was coming, every moment of it. Terror and desperation. Trying to hope. Right up to the end. I don’t remember the explosion, not exactly. I just remember struggling to breathe and...hurting.”

“Oh my god,” Steph said. She closed her eyes and felt her own tears sliding down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry.” 

_What came after?_ , she wanted to ask. _If I’d really died, where would I have gone?_. But she couldn’t ask. She was afraid of every single answer, from Jason biting her head off just for asking to...everything else.

They stayed leaning against each other for a few minutes.

“It was...kind of the same for me,” Steph eventually whispered. “I know I didn’t… _actually_...but I sure felt like I was dying. I thought I did. He kept hurting me and hurting me. But I never stopped fighting, I never stopped wanting to live.” Her whole body rocked forward in a sudden, uncontrollable sob, and she tried desperately to freeze her abdominal muscles, some voice in her head that sounded way too much like Batman—or was it Tim? Or Oracle?—saying _control yourself, Stephanie, control your body_. Her teeth were chattering with the effort of it. “I r-remember listening to machines scream and everything went black.” She took one huge gasping breath, then another, barely any calmer. “I d-didn’t plan it, okay? It wasn’t my idea, it wasn’t.”

Jason hauled Steph up against him and laid them both down on the bed, curling himself around her as she sobbed and shook. “It’s okay,” he said. “It wasn’t your fault and I don’t care.”

Steph clutched Jason’s arm, laid over her chest, and cried herself to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

“Can I just say,” Jason called through the door. “That I still can’t fucking believe they used to compare you to me.”

Steph gave her hair a last scrub with the towel and shimmied into the set of spare clothes snagged from the dresser she and Cass had claimed months ago, with Jason’s begrudging permission. 

“I knew they trashed _me_ ,” Jason continued. “And you know, fuck them, okay? But that’s fresh as hell. What a bunch of complete assholes. You’re _you_. You’re amazing.”

Steph was feeling considerably better after a serious crying jag followed by a few hours of sleep and a long shower, but hearing someone say nice things about her still felt pretty good right now. “I am?” she asked, coming out of the bathroom.

“Fuck yeah you are,” Jason said, pulling her into a one-armed hug. “Steph, you made _yourself_ into what you are. None of the rest of us did that, except for Bruce and maybe Babs. You’re my fuckin’ hero.”

Steph’s face turned warm as she hugged Jason back. “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“Well, that’s a fucking shame,” Jason said. “Man, I wish I’d known all this a month ago.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to punch Bruce in the face for it, but he apologized to me last month, and it would be, I dunno, ungracious to punch him now.”

“I slapped him in the face, once,” Steph admitted.

“That’s my girl.”

Steph laughed. “What was he apologizing for, anyway? He almost never does that.”

“For using me as a bullshit object lesson for you guys. And generally being a douchebag back towards...you know. The end.”

“Wow. I guess he’s always been like this.” For some reason, the thought disappointed her. She remembered looking up to Batman when she was a kid. He’d inspired her. Actually getting to know him and work with him...well, that had turned out to be a seriously mixed bag.

“See, that’s the thing.” Jason put up a finger. “It confused the fuck out of me for awhile when I came back, once I was out of my, like…” Jason waved a hand. “Gothic emotional rampage mode? And I had my head on a little straighter? He _wasn’t_ always like this,” he said. “Yeah, he had his moments, but back when it was just him and me and Alfie, he was...he was a good dad, okay? We used to get along really well.” Jason looked wistful. “We were _happy_. We fought sometimes, but he wasn’t closed off all the time. I could talk to him; he didn’t bottle everything the fuck up 24/7 the way he does now, apparently.”

“Huh,” Steph said. “That’s...really depressing and weirdly nice to know at the same time.” Her heart ached for him. For Bruce too, a little. It wasn't something she’d ever had to lose—her relationship with Bruce, well, it was what it was, and things had never been like that between Stephanie and either of her parents—but apparently Jason had had something good with Bruce that wasn't there anymore. That seemed terribly sad to her.

“Yeah. You would have liked him better, trust me.” Jason sighed. “I wish we’d met you back then. Even if you were only about five years old. We’d still have been besties.”

“I’m exactly one year younger than you, dumbass,” Steph pointed out. “Our birthdays are less than a week apart.”

“Really? I’m surprised no one’s tried to throw us a joint birthday party yet.”

“Next year.”

“I meant to ask last night—did the pigeon make it out okay?”

“Oh yeah—yeah, she did, she’s in a cage in the kitchen. I guess she’s still asleep.” On her way over from the warehouse to Jason’s safehouse, she’d stopped by a pet store just after it closed and convinced the manager to open it back up again. (The look on his face when Batgirl asked for a birdcage and seed for the one-legged pigeon tucked inside her cape had been priceless; she was pretty sure that was going to end up as an #OnlyInGotham moment.) It had been an impulse, before she'd actually decided where she was going and before she’d told Oracle that she was tired of getting scolded and that she was going off-comm for the rest of the night. At least the pigeon hadn't seemed upset with her, which felt very important just then.

“Are you kidding me—never mind,” Jason said, throwing his hands up into the air. “Whatever. If I risked my life saving a pigeon, I’d probably keep her, too. But she’s not staying here, okay? Because I don’t even know if I’m keeping this safehouse or not now that Bruce knows where it is.”

“Just until Babs stops being mad at me, and then I can set up a roost for her in the Clock Tower,” Steph promised him. They’d moved into the kitchen, and Steph pulled off the hand towel she’d draped over the cage the night before. The pigeon inside cocked her head, stood up on her single leg and flapped her wings before settling down again.

“Hey there, you trouble-making sweetie,” Jason said, poking a finger through the bars towards her. “She’s kind of pretty, actually. Look at that iridescent sheen on her chest. Does she have a name yet?”

“Pidge,” Steph said, making the decision there and then.

“Cool. I’m gonna call her Green Lion.”

Steph giggled. “Okay, fine. Hey, so can I put in a request for waffles for breakfast...?”

“You can, and as always, you get pancakes, because I do not have a waffle maker.”

“I take it you haven’t looked in the left bottom cabinet in awhile.” She opened the cabinet in question and offered up to Jason the waffle maker she’d stashed in there three weeks prior. She’d discreetly broken in one afternoon, and been disappointed at the lack of angry text message response.

“Well shit, I’m getting soft,” Jason said. “I really should ditch this place. Pigeons, waffle makers, Bruce—what the hell’s going to turn up next?” He sighed dramatically as he pulled a box of pancake mix out of the cupboard.

“How about some posters? This place is a little drab. Do you like One Direction?”

“I like Poison Idea.”

“I was _so_ close.”

Pidge cooed softly.

For some reason, it felt a lot like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> he's not gonna ditch the place


End file.
